Humans are animals evolved from species that form
hierarchical ladders where there were alpha apes and status ranks for everyone
else. With status came privilege. It is likely that early human groups spent
much of their time with the same status concerns as our ape ancestors. While humans have evolved their own unique
properties over time, the tendency for human groups to form a hierarchy is
still present. All human assemblies tend
to arrive at a leader and various levels of followers. While precise hierarchical levels tend to
exist mainly in military organizations, all members of the assembly will be
conscious of their status and concerned that they are treated fairly given
their status.

Payne uses the symbol of a ladder on which people project
their assumed positions to illustrate inequality and its consequences in human
organizations. He further concludes from
psychological studies and from anthropological arguments that humans are wired
to continuously monitor their environment for signs of status loss or status
gain. This activity is innate and
usually takes place subconsciously.

“….no one ever mentions
something that we know to be true, both from scientific studies and from simply
being human: ‘I crave status’.”

When asked to assess their status by placing themselves
on the rungs of a ladder, it becomes clear that people view their status in
ways that are only slightly related to the presumed status markers of income,
education and type of job. Rather,
presumed status seems to depend on how we compare ourselves to those we choose
as peers.

“It is true that, on average,
people with higher incomes, more education, and more prestigious jobs do rate
themselves higher on the ladder. But the
effect is relatively small. In a sample
of, say, a thousand people, some will rate themselves at the top, others will
rate themselves at the bottom, and many will be in between. But only about 20 percent of their
self-evaluation is based on income, education, and job status.”

Poor persons can feel comfortable with their status if
their peers, to whom they compare themselves, are in similar situations. On the other hand, a mere millionaire who
lives in a world of multimillionaires can experience the stress normally
associated with poverty. That is an
important concept to grasp.

“….inequality is not the same thing
as poverty, although it can feel an awful lot like it….Inequality makes people feel
poor and act poor, even when they’re not. Inequality so mimics poverty in our minds
that the United States of America, the richest and most unequal of countries,
has a lot of features that better resemble a developing nation than a
superpower.”

The health and longevity problems that are associated
with poverty have been well documented.
What Payne is saying is that the same problems arise for people who are
not objectively poor, but who merely feel poor because they suffer a
status deficit. Inequality then includes
not only those who are of low income and are objectively poor, but those who
have sufficient income to not be considered poor yet feel poor.

“We have to take subjective
perceptions of status seriously, because they reveal so much about people’s
fates. If you place yourself on a lower
rung, then you are more likely in the coming years to suffer from depression,
anxiety, and chronic pain. The lower the
rung you select, the more probable it is that you will make bad decisions and
underperform at work. The lower the rung
you select, the more likely you are to believe in the supernatural and in
conspiracy theories. The lower the rung
you select, the more prone you are to weight issues, diabetes, and heart
problems. The lower the rung you select,
the fewer years you have left to live.”

“Let me be clear that I am not
simply asserting that, if you are poor, then all of these things are more
likely to happen to you. I am stating,
rather, that these things are more likely to happen to you if you feel
poor, regardless of your actual income.”

In an earlier article
we discussed the connection between inequality and health, longevity, and the
impulse to make unwise decisions. Here
the focus will be on Payne’s claim that feeling poor or unequal will tend to
make you more likely to “believe in the supernatural and in conspiracy
theories.”

The various studies that psychologists perform to try and
understand why humans do the things they do have firmly supported the
conclusion that our brains come wired in such a way that we have a need to
believe that the world is an orderly place where things that happen have
explanations. This need is strong enough
that we will, at times, be moved to invent explanations where none exist. The psychologists also tell us that this need
becomes stronger at times when we feel most powerless. The collateral effects of being poor and the
similar effects of feeling poor that
inequality creates then feed this need to have explanations and result in a
tendency to believe in conspiracy theories and the supernatural.

“This assumption that the world
is orderly and predictable is a kind of mental bedrock that forms the
foundation for all of our perception, thinking, and believing. We are so good at generating regular patterns
that it can at times interfere with our ability to recognize that no pattern
exists at all.”

“We are especially likely to
manufacture meaningful patterns when we feel powerless. The predictability, and therefore
controllability, of patterns provides a bit of solace from the lack of control.”

Payne tells us that about 50 percent of the population
will believe in various conspiracy theories at any given time. Which theories are prevalent will depend on
the circumstances of the moment, but they will have a common theme: a person or
a group with power is in control and is causing things to happen.

“People who feel powerless tend
to believe in conspiracies carried out by the powerful.”

“At bottom, conspiracy theories
are about two things: power and distrust.
You can see the former at work in who believes which theories about
whom. The best predictor of which
conspiracy theories people believe at any given time is which political party
is in power.”

Distrust, particularly of government, drives a need for a
more satisfying explanation of what is going on than is officially provided—and
confirmation that someone is in charge of events.

“Distrust—not facts or
logic—made even contradictory theories seem more plausible than the official
account. To believe in a conspiracy, you
trade a bit of your belief that the world is good, fair, and just in exchange
for the conviction that at least someone—anyone—has everything under control.”

This need to see a believable pattern in events has
ramifications not only with respect to the judgment of physical facts, but also
with respect to moral interpretations as well.
Payne recounts a famous experiment in which a young woman was attached
to wires and subjected to a learning and memory test. Each time she made a mistake she reacted as
if in pain. Observers were told that she
was being given an electric shock each time she made a mistake. The observers did not know that the shocks
were staged and not real. The girl made
many mistakes and the lesson went on for a long time. One might expect this situation to generate
sympathy for the girl, but, as the experimenters expected, the opposite
happened.

“This poor subject was suffering
for the sake of a silly study, and the observers had every reason to feel
sympathetic toward the poor victim. And
yet, they deplored her….[they] called her unlikeable and immature, They said it would be hard to admire or
respect someone like her and they would not like to get to know her.”

“In order to maintain the
certitude that the world was fair, subjects manufactured flaws in the woman’s
character. Just as your visual system
fills in the scene with assumptions to render the world sensible, so does your
moral reasoning. Good things happen to
good people, and bad things happen to bad people. Something bad is happening to this
woman. Therefore, she must be a bad
person. All is well.”

Consider the distaste the Republican Party has for
welfare policies. In particular, focus
on the Tea Party’s division of the world into makers and takers. The good people of the world, the makers, deserve
to have good things happen to them. The
people in need of welfare, the takers, must be bad people who deserve their
misfortune. All is well.

Given the human need to perceive a credible pattern in
events and to believe that someone—anyone—is in charge of affairs, is it any
wonder that religious beliefs would be popular in certain circumstances and at
certain times?

“Monotheistic religions provide
believers with the reassurance that a benevolent, all-knowing, and all-powerful
being is controlling the universe. This
type of belief system offers many benefits.
Unlike conspiracy theories, which provide controllability but at the
expense of benevolence, religious belief is the ultimate win-win.”

“If feeling powerless and
insecure makes people more prone to see patterns and to give credence to
conspiracy theories, it stands to reason that it would also intensify religious
faith. Studies by Aaron Kay have
confirmed that when individuals are made to feel helpless or when the world is
portrayed as chaotic and unpredictable, they hold stronger convictions in a
powerful God who controls the universe.”

Given these claims, one would expect religion to flourish
where poverty and inequality are high and to retreat where they are low. That is exactly what is observed.

“….psychologists Kurt Gray and
Daniel Wegner looked at the U.S. states where people had more or fewer
hardships in their lives by compiling statistics on infant mortality, cancer
deaths, infectious disease, violent crime, and environmental hazards. They combined these maladies into a single ‘suffering
index’ and plotted it against the proportion of people in each state who stated
in polls that they strongly believed in God.”

“….the researchers found that
anguish does not pose a theological problem for most believers. Quite the opposite. Like the biblical Job, the more people
suffered, the more they believed in God.”

Payne also provides another demonstration of the dual
nature of inequality and poverty and the universal need for access to a source
of “answers.” The previous results suggest
that as nations become wealthier the degree of “suffering” and powerlessness
will diminish and people will have less need for religion. The following chart plots a measure of
religiosity versus national per capita GDP (income).

This data does support the notion that increased wealth
will lead to decreased need for religion.
Note, however, that there are two distinct outliers from the general
trend: China and the United States.
China has long discouraged organized religions so its low ranking might
not be surprising. Payne refers to the
United States as the most unequal of the wealthier nations. Would inequality possess an equivalence to
low wealth in terms of social dynamics?

“After accounting for the
difference between communist and noncommunist countries, China was no longer an
outlier. Even more important, though,
was the role of income inequality.
Highly unequal countries were much more religious than more equal
ones. The effects of inequality were
huge, and about as large as the effects of actual income. Once the data were plotted to show the
relationship between religion and income inequality (rather than average
income), the United States was no longer an outlier but fell right along the
line where it would be expected to be, high in both inequality and
religiosity. Poverty and inequality
together can explain the bulk of the differences across countries in religiosity.”

To the scientifically minded who like to argue with religious believers about logical or
historical inconsistencies within their belief systems, this scientific data
should be telling them that they are wasting their time. The data suggests that people are attracted
to religion not by dogma, but by the alleviation of the social needs it
provides.

Payne provides convincing arguments that poverty and
inequality are related in the way they affect human social responses. Both are bad.

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About Me

Hi, my name is Rich Couch. I spent my first career as a physical scientist. Now that I am retired I have chosen to go in another direction. I have had a lifelong love of books and an urge to write. Since I am not a story teller and I am way too old to start a new career I have found an outlet in writing essays combining reviews and my opinions of books and articles on politics and current affairs. My hope is that others will find what I have produced interesting and informative--and well written.